Stay Frosty, My Friends!

July is coming in hot, y’all!

Why you don’t want to drink beer out of a frozen glass.

It’s heating up out there, and it’s important to keep your beer as cold as possible, so it’s time to break out the frozen beer mugs, right? WRONG!!! Frozen mugs or glasses are absolutely the wrong way to enjoy a beer.

Let’s start with the chilling truth. How do those mugs get frosty? Instead of being allowed to air dry, giving the sanitizer time to evaporate, they are moved straight from the dishwasher into the freezer and the bleach-like sanitizer compound is frozen to the glass. When the beer is added later, the sanitizer melts and mixes right in, giving your brew a less than healthy adjunct that the brewer certainly didn’t intend.

How clean is that freezer anyway? Hopefully it’s cleaned regularly. What about your home freezer if you’re making your own frosty glasses? Anything else in the freezer will have its own tastes and aromas that are being circulated around and get attached to the surface of the ice. Last week’s teriyaki chicken? Last month’s tuna surprise? That’s all going into your beer.

The next problem is foaming. Most freezers are set to 0°F, which is way below freezing, meaning some water in the beer is going to freeze on the side of your glass as you pour the liquid in. This creates nucleation sites, giving the CO2 tons of places to focus and pop out of solution. You want some of that so you get a nice head on the beer. But too much and you get excessive foaming. This can lead to wasting a lot of beer down the drain as you pour, as well as the remaining beer in the glass being undercarbonated and tasting flat.

And, finally, the taste and aroma are negatively impacted if the beer is too cold. If the beer in your glass is actually 32°F or colder, your tongue is literally being numbed so you can’t properly taste the beer. Additionally, all the volatile aromatic compounds in solution in the beer went wizzing off into space when your beer foamed up too much during pouring. What’s left is super cold so the molecules in the beer are moving slower, imparting less to your nose, and there’s less remaining carbonation to help get the aromas where it needs to go. All in all you are substantially degrading the experience of consuming the beer.

You should maximize your enjoyment and experience by using a room temperature glass. It will only raise the temperature of your beer about 2 degrees, still keeping it at the optimal point of enjoyment.

Thanks for reading!